Open-ended Response Items
9.1
Noble Efforts Change Lives. Be Noble.
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TEST 1 READING & ENGLISH: 9.1 OPEN-ENDED RESPONSE TEST
DIRECTIONS: There is one passage on this test followed by an open-ended response question. Spend 20
minutes reading the passage and planning your response. Then, you will have 40 minutes to answer the openended response question on the following pages. You may refer back to the text as often as needed. As you read,
consider the following prompt:
In several well-developed paragraphs, determine a central idea in the excerpt from Maya Angelou’s
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Cite multiple pieces of strong and thorough textual evidence that support
this central idea.
Background Information: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is an autobiography written in 1969 by AfricanAmerican poet and writer Maya Angelou. Her story takes place in segregated Stamps, Arkansas. The paragraphs
below are numbered so that you may easily refer to them.
Excerpted from chapter 15 of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. 1969. Angelou, Maya.
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Mrs. Bertha Flowers was the aristocrat of Black Stamps. She had the grace of control to appear warm in
the coldest weather, and on the Arkansas summer days it seemed she had a private breeze which swirled
around, cooling her. She was thin without the taut look of wiry people, and her printed voile dresses and
flowered hats were as right for her as denim overalls for a farmer. She was our side’s answer to the richest
white woman in town.
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Her skin was a rich black that would have peeled like a plum if snagged, but then no one would have
thought of getting close enough to Mrs. Flowers to ruffle her dress, let alone snag her skin. She didn’t
encourage familiarity. She wore gloves too.
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I don’t think I ever saw Mrs. Flowers laugh, but she smiled often. A slow widening of her thin black lips
to show even, small white teeth, then the slow effortless closing. When she chose to smile on me, I always
wanted to thank her. The action was so graceful and inclusively benign.
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She was one of the few gentlewomen I have ever known, and has remained throughout my life the
measure of what a human being can be. […]
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One summer afternoon, sweet-milk fresh in my memory, she stopped at the Store to buy provisions.
Another Negro woman of her health and age would have been expected to carry the paper sacks home in
one hand, but Momma said, “Sister Flowers, I’ll send Bailey up to your house with these things.”
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She smiled that slow dragging smile, “Thank you, Mrs. Henderson. I’d prefer Marguerite, though.” My
name was beautiful when she said it. “I’ve been meaning to talk to her, anyway.” They gave each other
age-group looks. […]
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There was a little path beside the rocky road, and Mrs. Flowers walked in front swinging her arms and
picking her way over the stones.
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She said, without turning her head, to me, “I hear you’re doing very good schoolwork, Marguerite, but that
it’s all written. The teachers report that they have trouble getting you to talk in class.” We passed the
triangular farm on our left and the path widened to allow us to walk together. I hung back in the separate
unasked and unanswerable questions.
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“Come and walk along with me, Marguerite.” I couldn’t have refused even if I wanted to. She pronounced
my name so nicely. Or more correctly, she spoke each word with such clarity that I was certain a foreigner
who didn’t understand English could have understood her.
“Now no one is going to make you talk—possibly no one can. But bear in mind, language is man’s way of
10 communicating with his fellow man and it is language alone which separates him from the lower animals.”
That was a totally new idea to me, and I would need time to think about it.
“Your grandmother says you read a lot. Every chance you get. That’s good, but not good enough. Words
11 mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with the shades of
deeper meaning.”
12 I memorized the part about the human voice infusing words. It seemed so valid and poetic.
She said she was going to give me some books and that I not only must read them, I must read them aloud.
13 She suggested that I try to make a sentence sound in as many different ways as possible.
“I’ll accept no excuse if you return a book to me that has been badly handled.” My imagination boggled at
14 the punishment I would deserve if in fact I did abuse a book of Mrs. Flowers’s. Death would be too kind
and brief.
The odors in the house surprised me. Somehow I had never connected Mrs. Flowers with food or eating or
15 any other common experience of common people. There must have been an outhouse, too, but my mind
never recorded it.
16 The sweet scent of vanilla had met us as she opened the door.
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“I made tea cookies this morning. You see, I had planned to invite you for cookies and lemonade so we
could have this little chat. The lemonade is in the icebox.”
18 It followed that Mrs. Flowers would have ice on an ordinary day, when most families in our town bought
ice late on Saturdays only a few times during the summer to be used in the wooden ice cream freezers.
She took the bags from me and disappeared through the kitchen door. I looked around the room that I had
19 never in my wildest fantasies imagined I would see. Browned photographs leered or threatened from the
walls and the white, freshly done curtains pushed against themselves and against the wind. I wanted to
gobble up the room entire and take it to Bailey, who would help me analyze and enjoy it.
Now, use the provided scratch paper to outline your response to the above prompt. Please note work
completed on the scratch paper will not be scored.
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STOP!
DO NOT CONTINUE UNTIL TOLD TO DO SO.
Open-Ended Response Question:
In several well-developed paragraphs, determine a central idea of the excerpt from Maya Angelou’s
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Cite multiple pieces of strong and thorough textual evidence that support
this central idea.
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STOP! THIS IS THE END OF TEST 1.
DO NOT TURN THE PAGE UNTIL TOLD TO DO SO.
TEST 2 MATH: 9.1 OPEN-ENDED RESPONSE TEST
Directions: Write answers clearly and legibly in the space provided. Cross out any errors you make;
erased or crossed-out work will not be graded. Grades for duplicate solutions will be applied only for
the lowest scoring one. Your work will be graded on the correctness of your methods as well as your
answers. Answers without clear explanations or supporting work may not receive credit. Unless
otherwise specified, answers do not need to be simplified.
For question 1, consider the following: Teddy and Nicole are both creating a budget for a class set
of 29 textbooks. The cost of a single textbook is $51. Since neither of them has a calculator, they
use the mental math processes below to determine the cost of the class set.
Nicole’s Mental Math
Teddy’s Mental Math
30 textbooks at $50 each would cost $1,500.
30 textbooks at $50 each would cost $1,500.
So 29 textbooks at $50 each would cost $1,500-$50.
So 29 textbooks at $50 each would cost $1,500-$50.
Because the actual price of each textbook is $51 and
NOT $50, I must add $1 to my total.
Because the actual price of each textbook is $51 and
NOT $50, I must add $29 to my total.
So the total cost of the textbooks is $1,500 - $50 + $1.
So the total cost of the textbooks is $1,500 - $50 +
$29.
1. Which student has the correct mental math process for finding the cost of the textbooks? Justify why
one is correct in complete sentences.
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For questions 2-4 about rational and irrational numbers, consider these real numbers:
√5,
123 711𝜋 5591
55
, 1000 , 2500
2a. Order the four real numbers from least to greatest in the form given.
2b. List the rational numbers and explain why they are rational.
3. If 𝑥 is a rational number, and 𝑦 is an irrational number, will 𝑥 + 𝑦 result in a rational or irrational
number? Provide an example with your written explanation.
4. Assume 𝑧 is an irrational number. Can 𝑧 2 be rational? If so, provide an example. If not, explain why
in complete sentences.
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5. Sam starts to solve the following equation x = 42 by first multiplying both sides of the equation by
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three. Finish solving the equation using Sam’s method. Then explain why Sam’s method is the same as
multiplying by the reciprocal.
6. For the new equation
value of 𝑥? Explain.
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𝑥 = 𝑦, if 𝑥 is a positive number, will the value of 𝑦 always be larger than the
STOP! THIS IS THE END OF TEST 2.
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TEST 3 SCIENCE: 9.1 OPEN-ENDED RESPONSE TEST
DIRECTIONS: Answer the following questions using the information provided. Calculators may be used.
The heart rate of an organism can be affected by its environment. Depending on the type of organism, the organism’s heart
rate can be affected in different ways. Mammals, for example, have specific functions within their bodies to maintain a steady
heart rate despite the environmental temperature. Insects, reptiles, and other non-mammals are affected more directly by the
temperature of their surroundings. A group of students decided to conduct an experiment to test this scientific principal.
Students added equal volumes of water to four beakers and placed each beaker in a different water bath. Each student
used a thermometer to maintain the water baths at the temperatures shown in Table 1. The students then added an equal
number of water fleas, a type of insect, to each of their four beakers. The students used a timer to ensure the fleas were
Image from Discovery.com
in the water for one hour, then used microscopes to determine the average heart rate of the water fleas. The procedure
Figure 1: Flea.
was repeated for a total of three trials at each temperature, and the results were averaged. The results are summarized
in the data table below.
Table 1
Water Temperature (°C)
35
25
15
5
1.
Average Water Flea Heart Rate (beats/minute)
280
205
119
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Claim-Evidence-Reasoning (4 points)
Student A claims that flea heart rate is slower at lower temperatures. Determine if this student’s claim is valid or invalid.
Then, support your claim with two pieces of quantitative evidence. Finally, provide reasoning that links your quantitative
evidence to your claim using a scientific principle from the text.
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Quantitative Reasoning (2 points)
Student A noticed that the heart rate of the fleas was not changing by the same number of beats each time the water
temperature changed. Between which two consecutive temperatures did the fleas’ average heart rate change the most? Use
comparative data to justify your answer.
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3.
Data Evaluation (2 points)
Student A performed three trials at each temperature. Why did Student A run three trials instead of stopping after the
completion of one trial? How does the addition of trials impact experimental data?
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Data Evaluation (3 points)
Another group in your class is designing a new experiment to test how salinity (amount of salt) affects the average water flea
heart rate. To gather the data needed to answer this question, what new measuring tool would the student need to use?
Explain why they would need this measuring tool.
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Identify ONE variable from the previous experiment (the experiment which measure how salinity affects flea heart rate) that
would need to be controlled in the experiment. Explain what could happen to your results if this variable is not controlled.
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Scientific Inquiry (1 point)
The students in the class were asked to come up with a different experiment to test how an environmental factor affects flea
heart rate. They cannot use temperature or salinity, since these factors have already been tested. Write a testable question that
the students could use to further test flea heart rate.
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STOP! THIS IS THE END OF TEST 3.
DO NOT RETURN TO ANY OTHER TEST.